30,000 schoolgirls to get cervical cancer vaccine
HSE can afford jabs after €13m fall in cost
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THE rollout of the life-saving cervical cancer vaccine for 30,000 first-year secondary school girls is expected to begin before the summer, it was confirmed yesterday.
The bill for the programme will be €3m -- nearly €13m less than the original cost for vaccines and administration which the Government cited as the reason it reneged on a promise to give it to all 12-year-old girls in September 2009.
However, Health Minister Mary Harney insisted yesterday there were still not enough funds to provide a "catch-up" vaccination programme for older teenager girls.
The €3m will now cover the cost of administration by salaried public health staff and the vaccines, said Ms Harney.
The original €16m bill for the vaccine had included a budget of €6m for the administration of the drug, mostly by GPs. The two drug companies -- which were asking in the region of €10m for the vaccines -- were approached again before Christmas and invited to tender. One of their offers has now been accepted, she added.
Around 200 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer annually and 90 die from the disease. A national screening programme for adult women started in September 2008.
Health campaigners had severely criticised the minister after she was forced to break a promise made in August 2008 to roll out the vaccine last year.
The vaccine, to be given with parental consent, will be administered in three injections over six months and protects against the strains of the human papilloma virus (HPV), which causes 70pc of cervical cancers.
The vaccine will be free of charge to 30,000 girls this year.
It is unclear, however, if the lower prices can be expected to be maintained in the coming years although the vaccination programme will continue.
Ms Harney said she had received €20m extra for cancer services this year and the slashing of prices made it possible to provide the vaccine.
Volumes
The minister said yesterday she could not disclose at this stage which of the companies, GlaxoSmithKline or Sanofi Pasteur, had tendered successfully.
A spokesman for GlaxoSmithKline said it could not disclose the price it offered to supply the vaccine. "However, we have always maintained that the €10m figure attributed to procuring the vaccine in the Health Information and Quality Authority report was not reflective of what the true cost of the programme would be," the spokesman said.
"We have stated on numerous occasions that the price for a government vaccination programme would be significantly lower than this as the volumes of the vaccine being supplied would be much higher.
"We had previously called for a tender to be issued so that the affordability of a national HPV vaccination programme could be accurately assessed."
A spokesman for Sanofi Pasteur said the firm welcomed the minister's decision.
Rose Tully, of the National Parents Council Post-primary, yesterday said anything which protected lives was worth considering.
- Eilish O'Regan Health Correspondent
Irish Independent
